Ending Thoughts

Last night was my final photography class for Fall Quarter.

All 27 students or so took pushpins and put up their strongest pictures from all our assignments. I put up my later cropped sister portrait, landscape, stop motion, and swing set (Depth of Field), along with three abstracts, three light meter pictures, and two statements. I also put up the one with my sister petting my dog - because it was so darn cute.

We went around the room and had to get up in front of our pictures and talk about them... what we did, what we liked, what we didn't like, or anything that we could think of to say. Now, I hate speaking in front of groups of people that are staring at me. I was pretty nervous (without fail!) and forgot to mention some things that I wanted to say. But other than that, it went just fine.

By the end of the evening I felt very humbled by the great work that all of my classmates did. Partly because I know I did not work as hard in the darkroom as some of them did, and partly because I thought less of some of the photos before the critique started. It adds so much to a body of work to hear the photographer talk about the pictures. I am a very jealous person... jealous of other people doing better than me... so my first impressions were not very generous sometimes - thankfully I didn't say anything. But when we stopped and talked about them, I realized how good some of them were. But a couple of people's work just amazed me from the beginning! Some of those people are phenomenal! Wow! It helps me think, and feel more creative after seeing the whole class's presentation put together.

This was a great opportunity for me to take a step back from myself and think about my reactions to the people in my class and their work, and I think I'm going to improve. We'll see. I wish I could have tried talking about my pictures a second time... after I finish speaking the first time, most of the anxiety goes away. And it helped to hear some more of the students speak who were not nervous. But that would have been oddly boring to hear about the same pictures twice! :)

Well... I'm gonna keep taking pictures.

Jp